WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said on Friday that Admiral Mike Mullen was expressing “frustration” over alleged terrorist safe havens in Pakistan when the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the Haqqani network was an arm of the country’s intelligence service.
“The intelligence is not as clear as we might like in terms of what exactly that relationship is,” said Mr Obama in a radio interview when asked about Admiral Mullen’s testimony at a Senate hearing last weekWe’ve been very firm with them about needing to go after safe havens inside of Pakistan, but we’ve tried to also preserve the intelligence cooperation that we’ve obtained that’s allowed us to go after Al Qaeda in a very effective way,” he said.
There’s no doubt that the relationship is not where it needs to be and we are going to keep on pressing them to recognise that it is in their interest, not just ours, to make sure that extremists are not operating within their borders.”The US she said, had told Pakistan that it wanted to see an end to safe havens and “any kind of support from anywhere for terrorists inside Pakistan, and we also want to continue to work to put our relationship on a stronger footing.
Questions about this new US approach were also asked at a White House briefing on Friday as reporters tried to draw a link between Awlaki’s death in Yemen, and drone attacks in PakistanWhen asked why the US refused to acknowledge the drone attacks that had killed Awlaki and other key Al Qaeda leaders, Mr Carney said: “We are asked questions like that all the time and our response is the same, which is that we cooperate with partners around the world, whether it’s in Pakistan or Yemen, in taking the fight to Al Qaeda, and that cooperation takes many different forms.
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